Posts published under “ReBuy It…Or Not?”
Children of Men: Rebuy It…Or Not?
SO 2006!
CHILDREN OF MEN (2006/BLU-RAY) Alfonso Cuaron’s bleak 2006 masterpiece Children of Men is as harrowing as ever in this pristinely produced Blu-Ray edition. The superb HD transfer of the theatrical feature alone makes this a worthy purchase, capturing every speck and scrape of splattering bullets, blood, mud, etc. in an intense, overwhelming presentation—Cuaron more than proves here that you don’t need 3D to create a truly “immersive” experience. But what makes this edition absolutely essential is the stellar bonus content, including some sweet interactive Blu-Ray exclusives, like pop-up info windows that allow the viewer to closely examine newspaper headlines (with actual stories to go along with them!), TV news reports, and commercials that only blip across the screen for a moment during the film. Another Making Of pop-up window feature shows production footage and interviews that play along with the scenes in real time, an interesting hybrid of Behind the Scenes featurette and director’s commentary. Read more »
Trust Us. Used Cars: ReBuy It…Or Not?
USED CARS (1980/DVD) Robert Zemeckis’ follow-up to his nostalgic Beatlemaniacal directorial debut,1978’s I Want To Hold Your Hand, was a reactionary experiment—after the squeaky clean former failed to win big box office, the latter was meant to be 180 degrees in the opposite direction, resulting somewhat successfully in the director’s only R-rated film, a crude, lewd, and (just a little) dark-tinged 13-year-old-boy-friendly romp. Too bad the box office still stunk—partly the result of a nearly nonexistent ad campaign and a premature limited screens release launched a week after the opening of one of the biggest and most repeat-viewed comedies of the ‘80s, Airplane!—because Used Cars is a fun, scrappy, and fairly dirty ride through the sleazy American west of the late 1970s. (Don’t feel too bad for Zemeckis, though—he eventually made a few bucks on a little trilogy of squeaky clean films starring a time-traveling Michael J. Fox, not to mention Romancing the Stone, Forrest Gump, and Cast Away, before turning to surprisingly dark and occasionally awesome computer animated family films in the ‘00s with The Polar Express, Beowulf, and A Christmas Carol.)
It isn’t hard to understand why 8-year-old Me loved this film so much when MY MOM took us kids to see its initial release. (Other inappropriate films of that era for which I loved MY MOM for taking me to: Brian DePalma’s Dressed To Kill and Blow Out!) For starters, it prominently featured my favorite thing ever at the time, besides Star Wars: Boobs. Add in funny bit parts for “Lenny” AND “Squiggy” from TV’s hit Laverne & Shirley, and the charming swagger of relative newcomer Kurt Russell (then known only for innocuous teen Disney films and his critically praised lead in John Carpenter’s hit ’79 TV miniseries, Elvis), who would soon win a permanent place in my weird lil’ heart for his leads in some of my fave ‘80s movies, all helmed by John Carpenter, duh: Escape From New York, The Thing, and Big Trouble in Little China, and you’ve officially scored a horny adolescent boy hat trick. Read more »
Kenny Rogers Not Known For His Six Pack: ReBuy It…Or Not?
Which probably dumb fave movies from (y)our youth are worth re-buying in the latest DVD/BluRay editions? Shhh, and we’ll pop our creaky knees and tell you…
SIX PACK (DVD/1982) I accidentally rediscovered this 1982 time capsule treat while on the treadmill, trying to find some piece-of-shit thing on cable to keep me occupied (Hung and True Blood, the usual piece-of-shit things keeping me treadmill-occupied that month were both repeats and terrible). For once-tubby kids like myself who spent way too many hours watching bad cable in the ‘80s, Six Pack’s opening credit sequence—Kenny Rogers’ megahit (and actually pretty awesome song), “Love Will Turn You Around,” accompanying footage of K-Rog driving the back roads of America in a camper pulling a race car trailer—is as instantly recognizable as Fraggle Rock or You Can’t Do That On Television or one of those middle school crushes you’d forgotten about, until one day you accidentally bump into them as adults at the Piggly Wiggly, and while you are pleasantly surprised to see them, you suddenly realize that the girl you once compared to Lisa Bonet was actually more Cagney & Lacey. (And no matter what your Dad said, there was no “pretty one” in the C&L—check an old TV Guide for shivering proof.)
Six Pack wastes no time in setting up its plot—basically, the film’s poster’s tag line pretty much says it all: (please read the following in YOUR DEEPEST MOVIE TRAILER VOICE) Kenny Rogers is Brewster Baker. His racing career was going in reverse, until six car-crazy kids joined his pit crew and put him back on the track. Consider me SOLD! And My Meat = In The Seat. Anyway, temporarily stuck in a roadside gas station bathroom, K-Rog eventually emerges (through a high tiny window and into a pile of JUNK! Oh, Kenny.) to find his race car totally stripped! After a pretty sweet car chase (something we don’t see enough of in high speed pursuits: the Winnebago) our hero runs the yet unseen thieves’ ol’ panel truck off a bridge and into a river. Just imagine how surprised K-Rog is when he see SIX KIDS climb out of the floating away truck, trying desperately to make it to the shore. “But they’re JUST KIDS!” He gasps. Upon seeing a final tiny kid trapped on the sinking truck, as would any just and proud American, the Rog puts aside his petty hey-you-stole-my-race-car-junk! trip to strip off his sweet jacket (like a beardy bumpkin Batman, transforming from double to single denim in like two seconds) and dive in to the roiling water. He rescues the brat, like a HERO, and berates the wet kids on the shore. Where do they get off? Boy! He’s gonna tell their Mama and they are going to be baby spanked! (That is, spanked like a baby.) Read more »
